Hilary Scharper spent her summers as a young girl on the shores of Georgian Bay where she developed a deep love of its natural beauty. Later on she studied anthropology at Yale University and eventually became interested in peoples’ stories about their relationships with the natural world. A professor at the University of Toronto, she now teaches on wilderness and cultural approaches to nature.

Throughout her life, she has been drawn to the literary classics and especially the gothic tradition. In recent years she has served as an assistant lighthouse keeper on the Bruce Peninsula in northern Ontario where she has explored an emerging literary form—something she terms the eco-gothic.

Hilary Scharper currently lives in Toronto with her son and her husband, Stephen Scharper, also a professor at the University of Toronto.